001yeah I call um this November 10th meeting of that model County School Board Georgia Ms Carlson do you have a motion from our closed session I do chair Paige I move that the board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters were awfully Exempted from the open meeting requirements the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorized enclosed meeting were heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting second Luke I missed calls from the second by Dr cuff that we certify by Voice vote that everything that was discussed in the closed session was in that motion Miss Johnston Mr alcaro yes Miss Lee Yes Dr AKA yes Miss Carlson yes Miss Osborne yes Mr Payne yes motion Kerry thank you the Pledge of
002Allegiance of the United States of America standings one nation under God indivisible we will observe a moment of silence [Music] foreign [Music] thank you could I have a motion to approve an agenda for tonight a move that we approve tonight's agenda seconds Group by Ms Osborne and second by Ms Lee that we approved tonight's agenda in a discussion on the motion if not Miss Johnston Miss Carlson yes Miss Osborne yes Dr akuff yes Leslie yes Mr Alco yes Mr Page yes Russian Carey I will need a motion to approve our consent agenda and we approve our consent agenda a second second by Ms Osborne that we approve the consent agenda any question in a discussion on the motion if not Ms Johnston Miss Lee yes Mr Caro yes Dr Anka yes Miss Osborne yes Miss
003Carlson yes Mr Page [Music] all right to introduce our board members and to have uh light check Dr Kate acleft Acuff Jack Jewett District Ellen Osborne Scottsville District I'm Graham page Samuel Lola district and our student rep Brisa Cabello Chico thank you uh I don't think we have any announcements do we Dr Huss I did just want to acknowledge uh we invite principals to come to the board meetings and they sign up for that and we do have uh Cassandra blunt a principal of a Jackson P Burley Middle School here tonight so I want to thank Ms Blount for coming out to the meeting okay thank you very much for showing us thank you so much okay is it possible to turn up the mics Mrs Johnson okay all right thank you all right our
004Spotlight on education Lisa okay thank you Mr Page we know from an extensive industry-wide research and from our own hallways and classrooms that the quality of a learning environment greatly influences the ability of a student to learn at their Highest Potential in fact a strategic plan learning law emphasizes the importance of engagement Health and Wellness and community and sending out the goals and objectives of our School Division the good news is that there is no lack of enthusiasm and support for new ideas that bring our school communities together and one of the most successful programs this year already is having an impact at Jackson P Burley Middle School enhancing learning environments Is Not A New Concept at Burley which is one of the first schools in our division to create and Champion an anti-bullying program
005more than two decades ago further back burley's placing history was made together by the relationships that inspired students faculty and staff to life-changing accomplishments Now chronicled by its inclusion on the Virginia landmarks register and the national register of historic places today the school is leading once again modeling a new program This Is How We Do It building the best birthday Community the idea was born under the desire of principal Cassandra Bank to establish school-wide behavioral expectations using such approaches as reinforcing positive behavior throughout support through support systems key was providing opportunities for continuous Community Building the blueprint Essence pronunciation the blueprint for Burley school-wide expectations initiative was created during the Southern Regional Education board Summer Conference on social and emotional learning that included the school's principal Cassandra blunt its social and emotional counselor Mark McCoy
006and the student safety coach of anore the program includes posters and signage throughout the school a theme song that soon come in the hallways reports from students on their morning newscasts in an impressive sense of ownership that's evident among students and staff the program concentrates support for such goals as improving attendance the language views and interpersonal Communications and six core values that govern peer relationships these values include love trust fairness support accountability and safety This Is How We Do It seeks to confirm the improvements in the school's learning climate by increasing positive results in the Panorama survey at least five percent using techniques such as the Burnley young leaders random acts of kindness grade level challenges and my favorite The Wheel of Fortune are all essential contributors to these improvements here with us is Savannah
007or Burley student safety coach and Mark McCoy it's social emotional counselor event Mark will tell us a bit more about the program's success and some early results from this false Panorama survey big all right good evening um I'm Ivan Orr a student safety coach at Burley Middle School and this is my counterpart and co-lead of the program commission McCoy's emotional counselor at Burley and we just wanted to provide you all this evening with a brief overview of what we do again the program is called This is how we do it our theme song is the song from the 1995 uh you know Montel Jordan This Is How We Do It it plays on wbms every morning and so the students are very familiar with the music um so we wanted to start uh real quickly
008with with the goals and so one of the first goals that we identify with the program is that all students will have a clear understanding of the expectations for successful participation in the Jackson P Burley learning community too yeah and also all teachers will have a clear understanding of their roles in supporting students to meet their expectations now one of the things that we have done is we have divided this program into two separate program strands that self I'm over top of one and Mr McCoy's over top of the other I'm over top of attendance and so one of the things that we talk about when we talk about attendance for our students is that um you're being here means everything to us we really try to model that we really try to make that
009meaningful for our students and so some of the bullet points uh under the strand of attendance uh is that being we want students to be their uh you know present physically and mentally we work on our transitions with our students from class to class and around the building and we also work on what is in our locus of control or just tardies once they're in the building and my part is relationship matters um to give me five that's Miss Cassandra Blunt's baby she had that for some time so give it up to heaven so um give me five minutes respect attention time enthusiasm and best effort in that order it's leading off with respect um something that I focus on is peer-to-peer interaction student staff interaction and effective communication with our students to our staff
010[Music] and just to give you a little more of a deep dive into attendance and I shared this with our staff first we started with leadership in the summer before pre-service and then doing pre-service but one of the things I shared with him from my own personal background was that uh with my daughter who's now Junior at George Mason University when she was born one of the things that the thing that I said to her is I'm so glad you that you're here and and that's something that I always try to share with our students when we come into the building I'm glad that they're here and it's genuine and so when we talk about how attendance matters uh the better place that we use online is that we live here uh you know we
011can work together to reach our shared goals uh when you're here we can check in to see how you're doing both physically and mentally when you hear the opportunities for Success are increased exponentially when you're here uh you strive daily to be present in mind body and spirit when you're here this you strive to walk and talk and greet each other in the barely way so that's how we do it early and as we make our way to class we embrace the adage that on time is late uh but we often extend ways and one of the things that I personally was so clear on is that we encourage our students to beat the bell and when they beat the bill they can turn into the teacher and then they can get to the work
012and then we were here every moment is precious being tardy missed the most precious moments of all but the underlying thing the three line is we're so glad that you're here and my part as again relationship matters again give me five respective attention time enthusiasm best effort and I concentrate on peer-to-peer interaction as we know pre-post D these kids are different so we got to handle these kids differently so that's part of my job is you know how to handle these kids you know pre and post them these kids and then also something that I take pride in and hold these kids accountable all the six core values um while we was out at a training in Dallas Texas I was reading and you know you see these six core values love trust fund support
013accountability and safety love is not an affection that's a choice it's not it's not an infection it's a choice so that's something I tell my kids is I love you and that's a choice and they take that and run with it but yes I just hold these kids accountable and just I want the best for them and lastly we wanted to uh you know one of one of the again an overarching theme of what we're trying to do here is that we positively frame our expectations and so we wanted to just share with you some of our school-wide expectations and how we positively frame those and so so the touch points that we're working on uh are on our hallways and stairwells you know how we move around and what the expectations are there uh
014our gymnasium you know we can be it can be loud it can be rambunctious but we run a positive reframe our interactions there uh our classrooms and our learning spaces as well as our restrooms we we had some challenges last year and some Tick Tock challenges last year but we're moving away from those and so we try to reframe these things into a positive light we have some others what you want to share yeah um cyber bullying activity as you know these kids they would like to tune into their uh take the technology you say classrooms and learning buses and Bus Loop you know expectations of what it looks like to be in the Bus Loop you get outside you get to the brush you get on your bus um say cafeteria always there was
015gymnasium I think you hit them all okay and so uh and so then um you know kind of where we are now where we're moving um is that you know we have these expectations and then we can get to the the opportunities and the opportunities for our community building um you know we look towards a Saturday academy uh where it would be some interest-based exploration for our sixth and seventh graders uh working towards our early young leaders program for 8th graders uh as well as focusing on attendance whether it's perfect attendance or attendance growth uh random acts of kindness uh through citizenship and our JP BMS Helping Hands uh that will be our very helpful folks we're going to share some of them yeah and just to add um last year from the Panorama we
016were at the kind of the bottom and after doing the Panorama from this year we had there at the top so I see Improvement so um you know that's sort of a nutshell of where we are This Is How We Do It um I don't know if there are any questions I've got questions from the board doctor guy how do you deal with your how have you dealt with your incoming middle schoolers I mean they're sort of new to the environment do you have any special Outreach to them you yeah um like Mr Orr said um but in the morning good morning news we're only talking about this is how we do it you know just setting the expectations first thing in the morning getting it in their brain early and I would also add
017to that we have spent a lot of time with our sixth graders as far as being close to them in the building is you know if you walk this you know you walk barely you know that our sixth grade room is an added Wing So doing this transitions one of our team is always down there to kind of help our students find their way and then we spend a lot of time conferencing um trying to get our sixth graders to understand the early way because it is new for them and we understand that and we provide some Grace but I think November 10th going into a level so you know they kind of understand you know our expectations some way so you know a couple of thoughts that that seem to go into both of
018your purviews is uh I loved what you said about we're glad you're here because that's that's huge especially for somebody who's debating whether or not they should even be coming it's nice to go to a place where you're glad I'm here uh and and in both in both situ oh sorry in both situations I see you and if you're seeing them every day or they're you know glad you're here and and it that gets into something that has been a mantra of the school division at least as long as I've been on the board and that is all means all yeah and so I I applaud what you're doing in in both of your areas of responsibility thank you thank you thank you other questions I didn't have a question so much as a comment
019to just say that I really appreciate the message that you shared and agreed with it attendance in particular is something that I think is so important to the success of a child and I think often children get kind of lost lost in the crowd and people aren't paying attention to whether or not they're attending or authority and what that means so I just wanted to say thank you I also really appreciate that you ended it with a tied economy accountability like you the Panorama scores last year were concerning and you're working really hard to change them and I'm really glad that you're making positive change thank you thank you [Music] I don't have one question all of the students at Berlin nobody was was probably just so twinkled somebody to say even not that when
020that song This is how we do it was popular so how did um how did you come up with that as a title as compared to something that maybe they would be more familiar with doctor have something to do with it yeah so it was her baby and her Mantra so we took it around with it for so okay it's very very appropriate so I'm glad that you know that middle school students able to sort of adapt to that music so thank you so very very much for your report to us tonight thank you thank you thank you thank you gentlemen we will now move to our public comment Miss Carlson oh okay was there any school board superintendent business other than uh just noticed uh Josh Walton from principal at Walton Middle School came
021in just want to recognized him for coming out tonight thank you Josh Mr Wilton I I had I had one little piece of business I want to get credit for my 6 morning it was actually on the suggestion of Mr Caden Wright who's in the audience right now it was very informative it was we did experience one double back in a Bus full of late students although they were a joy to ride the bus with they were late and then we also got to do a high school run it was neat to see the difference between the but most the neatest thing of all of the whole experience was to see how the bus drivers were interacting with each other constantly on the radio to try to figure out how to get as many students
022as possible to school in a timely manner and really relying on each other which is a double-edged sword in that I asked the bus driver who we were with and she said it feels like a family and it's nice to feel supported by your workers but it's also really tough task that they're having to take on and over time I think that does wear them down so it wasn't it was great I know almost probably everyone has done a bus ride so I wanted to say I didn't mind and if you haven't done one yet it's worthwhile foreign last week jono and I took the mental health first aid training that is offered through the division and I found this to be very helpful and useful very informational it's four and a half hours in
023person yes um it's four and a half hours in person and two hours virtually so and I thought it was very helpful Miles Nelson taught it with Kate Shapiro from region 10 and so if he comes up I would take that thank you I have something too okay chair page I've met this week with James Pierce and Kate Lambert who is the new uh Ed for the boys and girls club that is on schedule to open by hope in mid February but what we talked about as well is that we can collaborate on a lot of different issues and one of which was perhaps having their counselors and staff training Mental Health First Aid as well so I've made those connections with Miles Nelson and he has already contacted the region 10 folks so we're
024all looking how we can collaborate to best support our students okay thank you so thank you for calling that to my attention Miss Carlson because we would have missed all of those informative points yeah and I was all about board members I'll say one other notice because Kate and I are going to be there tomorrow there's a Veterans Day event that's what this is set up for it's tomorrow at 11 I'm in this building if anyone's interested okay yeah and I'm I'm doing public comments so I'll start with that um let me pull up the regulations I'm reading them from the agenda so they should have been available to everyone who signed up if you go to the meeting agenda items we invite and actively seek The public's input and the matter is relevant to
025school board governance and provide for time in our business meetings to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on topic comments disruptive behavior from speakers are for members of the public in attendance will not be tolerated anyone who willfully disrupts this meeting in a manner that prevents or interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting may be ejected by the chair individuals and our organizations wishing to speak during public comment must sign up with the clerk sign up is available beginning on the Monday of the meeting week until 3 30 pm on the day of the meeting says today public comment guidelines are as follows speakers should adhere to the following protocol you should state your name and address our voting district you should address comments to the
026school board as a whole you should limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance or School Division operations if you have written statements or other supporting material please hand those to the clerk um if you're unable to complete the presentation in the time allotted which is three minutes you can provide a copy to the clerk who will distribute it to the school board members you can also email us individually or as a whole three minutes are allowed for each presenter to speak you are required to stop after three minutes there are not more than 10 speakers today there are nine so we will stick with the three minutes there is a system up here when the light turns yellow that means you have one minute left when the light turns red
027that means your three minutes has elapsed and your time is done in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or other audible form of support or non-support be used if you wish to show support for a speaker you can stand and raise your hands and raise your hands so that is all I have like I said nine speakers one of them is on Zoom she will be our last speaker I will just go ahead and read them all out so that people are aware of when they're going to be coming up so I have Nancy Moore Jordan Barr Caden Wright Meg Bryce Randy zackerson Christy corman's Mary McIntyre McIntyre sorry Mary Emily Yan and Leslie good so Nancy Moore more if you're here [Music] hello thank
028you for having me tonight and thank you for your service to the community my name is Nancy York and I'm from the White Hall district and um I do appreciate that that the board has allowed us the opportunity to speak to the policies about the parents right to review and exceptionally explicit instructional material and that relates to your two policies that are called the learning resources and textbook selection and also the school instructional materials policies first in the proposed policy Roman numeral two double a dash R page two it reads the superintendent slash designee shall appoint an evaluation committee to review and to evaluate textbooks in one or more of the subject areas for which adoptions are effective beginning July 1 of the designated year however but under it's the state code of Virginia eight
029BAC 720-170 quote the appointment of evaluation committees by the local school board is to review and evaluate textbooks in each of the subject areas and by my interpretation of the code of the state code we should be reviewing books in all the subject areas not just one or more so I have a question about that secondly under policy to a dash F2 learning resources textbook review criteria form I have a question with regard to why are there other sexually explicit terms and conditions that are outlined in the Virginia code 18.2-390 that are not listed under sexually explicit criteria without listing those I'll move on to just say thank you I did want to have one I had one other thing that sexually explicit material entry does not have a rating scale on the draft policy
030that I saw for Albemarle County the other criteria do have a rating scale and I wondered why I'm hoping that means it's a yes or no and if there is sexually material explicit material there in the criteria you would just say okay it doesn't work to have it as an instructional material um I as a parent and a grandparent I asked the school board to give sufficient time for public comment in an effort to implement a policy on January 1 2023 that's good for all of us going forward thank you thank you Miss Moore the next speaker will be Jordan Barr [Music] good up good evening some Jordan Barr I live in the Rio District Idlewood Drive in Charlottesville I'm a parent of several students here in the county um I'm kind of piggybacking on
031what uh Miss Muir had to say um you know just focusing on parental rights really just hitting that aspect of it Virginia state Bill 656 supports parental rights and development of these model policies concerning instructional materials in sexually explicit content I just really want to focus on the parental Authority as a constitutional right that has been recognized multiple times by the U.S Supreme Court and upheld in Virginia law through Virginia code and Virginia Supreme Court and school officials must compile a list of all materials that could fall into this questionable purview of sexually explicit materials teachers and other Educators must review their classroom materials or other instructional materials being used during the school day and compile a list that is accessible to parents for review so like I don't want to get into the specifics
032of it but I just want to make sure the parents have that opportunity to look at those materials and even if it's copyrighted you know to be able to go to the school and not have any restrictions to be able to walk into the school and go look at those materials and decide for themselves what's appropriate or not and then also recognizing parents rights to receive alternative materials or assignments for their child in a way that does not result in them being singled out or being ostracized and again parents should not be treated as an afterthought nor is a group who must be appeased rather you know feel like the parents are the primary customers and the primary stakeholders in Albemarle County Public Schools and then also quoting from you know the the bill 656
033non-punitive implementation the department remains committed to working with school divisions to ensure positive safe and nurturing learning environment for all students and to this end Local School Division policies shall implement the requirements of the act in a manner that is not punitive in any way for children whose parents request alternative instructional material so just kind of piggybacking on the last point and then um also the the bill 656 serves respect for parent decision making and each parent has the right to make decisions concerning their child's education in accordance with their Customs faith and values and thank you for your time those comments Mr Barr [Music] good evening I'm kitten Wright I'm a student at Albemarle High School and I'd like the board to reconsider the proposed career learning communities planned the division's idea is simple
034students will be able to choose from a range of 16 different subjects and specialize their education in the field of their choice one paper this idea is great but when you put it into action there are major issues with this proposal firstly for most career learning communities students will have to be transported outside of their base Schools transportation needs make this program conflict with one of the division's Strategic goals Equitable and transformative resources it is not Equitable to create more routes for already are already exhausted transportation system when many students still arrive early to class it is almost offensive to plan to build more centers and more academies while many schools are still unsupported and underfunded in addition the idea of career learning communities itself directly contradicts with another window division the division strategic goals
035affirming and empowering communities the easy easiest way to destroy a school's Community is to remove its students in career learning communities does exactly that now this might not necessarily be a bad thing but it certainly doesn't align with the division's Strategic goals finally career learning communities will not create thriving students the high school redesign design team didn't properly communicate with students teachers or administrators to make sure that this program will be successful a survey isn't enough to Warrant this big of a change to put it simply an uninformed plan which this is will create chaotic results one of two things has to be true either the division has no intention of fulfilling the Strategic goals that itself for itself or the people that are in front of me are so blissfully unaware of the issues
036in this program that it seems like they never cared about it in the first place so I would ask you a question how can you expect your teachers your students or your staff to be successful in this program when you're setting this up for failure I and many others would suggest that you re-evaluate your career learning communities before it's too late thank you thank you for those comments Mr Wright the next speaker will be Meg Bryce hi I'm Meg Bryce I'm from the Samuel Miller District thank you for your time tonight I wanted to speak about the budget survey that was recently distributed I I guess I guess I'm a little bit shorter than you are um I want to speak about the budget survey that was recently distributed and I think that you all
037did not create the survey I I think that it was created by acps staff so I recognize that um you all didn't create it but still if it's going to be used to direct funding for next year I think this should be known um I found the survey very frustrating so this is supposed to determine the priorities that the 2023-24 budget should support each question on the survey begins with a stated objective that is part of the Strategic plan so I'm going to give one example so in this case acps will Foster culturally responsive environments that affirm the identities and life experiences of all stakeholders um first of all at a very high level I found found the survey problematic because there's nowhere for me to say that I don't agree with an objective if
038I find an objective so vague that it is meaningless there's no way for me to indicate that throughout the survey the questions are working in such a way that that the respondents are basically forced to affirm and applaud the Strategic plan the only choice is to what degree but more specifically regarding some of the proposals meant to support the objective um the respondent is given three three recommendations and there are it's like three bullet points for each question so two that that stood out to me in this example first add adaptive play equipment to playgrounds make play spaces accessible for students with special physical needs I loved this like I would absolutely support that a support funding that the next one is curate diverse literacy resources that can be distributed to families to build libraries
039at home I'm decidedly less enthusiastic about that I think we're a public school system we're not a public home library system so that would be really list on my low of Prior on my list of priorities of things to fund but I have to respond to them as a whole I'm not allowed to say like I really like number two but I don't really like number three so I just found the survey incredibly problematic um and so in the future I'd like to see more engagement with parents about the survey or I'm sorry about next year's budget um with more of a focus on prioritizing exactly what um like how money is spent I mean that's that's the point of a budget right we have we have limited um funds and so we need to
040prioritize what we really want to spend it on and hopefully there will be more of a focus on academic Excellence because I thought the survey was um shockingly thin on any mention of that thank you for those comments Miss Bryce the next speaker that we have signed up is Randy zackerson good evening uh my name is Randy zackerson I'm in the Samuel Millard District I've got two grandsons in Western and Henley and I'm here to comment on the board's response to the new Virginia Board of Education model policy relative to parental rights I've always been a big parental rights person as you may remember recall but I find the proposed instruction materials your policy IIA to be kind of obscure and obtuse it deserves to be discussed and debated with the parents of this community
041I didn't like it in the last two years when you had two other controversial policies that you never debated or discussed you just rubber stamped consent agenda you just you didn't care about parental input this is another case of it uh and uh you've already made your views about this parental this model policy known and knowing certain terms you've actually published it uh in a very I don't think proper form but in any case you must comply with it by law you were so adamant that you had to play with the other ones by law so you got to apply by this parental rights by law and uh I want you to embrace this policy with the same enthusiasm that you did on your favored policies CRT and transgender because in those policies you went
042through every other policy and figured out what needed to change to reflect those policies I expect you to do the same with this policy this board if you look at the if you look at your this draft which we got no comment on it lists nine cross-reference policies okay I expect you to go through these nine policies with the same figure as you did with the other policies let me take one for example I didn't go through all of them but there's the first one you mentioned in this is your policy INB teaching about controversial issues yeah I think that kind of pertains to this policy however if you read that policy last reviewed like in 2019 you you really clearly specify the parameter the students rights and the teachers rights it's only a one-page
043policy but you talk about students rights teachers rights nowhere in this do you mentioned parents rights matter of fact the word parent does not even appear in this policy and the policy is called future about controversial issues anyway thank you when you pass this one Whatever it turns out to be because nobody knows Mr I expect you to do the same here thank you okay you're pretty so but if you wanted to give those to the clerk you're welcome to do so I didn't know if you wanted to pass that along what the relative policy I didn't know if you had comments on it no no you were trying to give it to us or not well no just look up your policy eyes thank you thank you yes uh the next speaker is Christy
044corman's [Music] good evening my name is Christy Gormans I live in the Samuel Miller Miller district and I have two children in elementary school I also want to say that I just couldn't be happier with our experience at Murray Elementary specifically led by Sita delaurier thing I'd like to comment about is the recent budget survey we didn't receive any details on the budget itself and my search has been fruitless so it was difficult to answer budget related questions without the scope of what percent of the budget is tied to each objective and effort for context the questions were phrased so the only way to respond was in the author's desired way which only checks a box of community engagement I did not feel like I was being authentically engaged our budget should focus on retaining
045our high quality teachers and staff academic excellence and school safety this survey emphasizes extra curricular activities being a mental health clinic fossil fuels and school records among other things we owe our students and Community a consistent safe high quality education and until we're doing that there isn't room in the budget for anything else secondly I'd like to thank you for responding to our concerns at previous meetings and putting the parental rights regarding instructional materials on the agenda I've compared the draft policy that Mr zackerson referenced to the model policy provided by the governor and I feel more information is needed before this should be approved the most important point is who decides what sexually explicit material is the draft policy reads that the school board decides do you all read everything do you have a
046pulse on the threshold of 14 000 sets of parents parental involvement is a must when it comes to this topic specifically so I would like to see a revised draft that includes more detail oversight and further definition thank you thank you for those comments Miss corman's the next speaker is Miss McIntyre Ms McIntyre I'm such a visual person that when I see the MC C that or it's there's not the a I can't pronounce it right even though I clearly know you start thanking you for raising bus driver pay raising concerns about the compensation study our stipend pay not being adjusted in the state of intervention in this Division I received one reply from jono thanking me and saying he would read it the next day but that's it having heard nothing regarding the actual
047concerns that I raised I forwarded it to you all again yesterday morning I understand that sometimes emails get buried but again nothing until this afternoon a quick reply from Katrina so I signed up for public comment because if this is going to continue to be a one-way conversation I might as well have it with myself in public now out of curiosity I searched my emails over the last six years I've emailed the board maybe eight times total I am not the annoying person blowing up your inbox over every little thing I've attended nearly every school board meeting in the past six years I have spoken in public comments sporadically only when compelled by something important and probably fewer than 10 times total in six years most of you who have had a conversation with me
048at least once and I've proven my personal commitment to making this division better but I'm not asking for special treatment for myself I'm asking for what everyone should get I'm a parent of two acps students parents should get a reply when they write to you with concerns I'm an employee and a leader of the aea an organization that more than 70 percent of your employees elected to represent them your overall employee satisfaction and morale are very low all employees should get a reply if they write to you with concerns I'm a constituent and a stakeholder besides policy changes what have you accomplished you haven't solved overcrowding closed a single Gap fixed Transportation or our sub shortage you've denied employees their labor rights by rejected collective bargaining next year voters will want to know what it
049is that you have done anything that deserves re-election and I'm not sure that you can say you are responsive to your constituents a generic response that ignores specific concerns is not being responsive now as an educator I realize you might need some scaffolding to make this easier for you we aren't going to change that goal and lower the expectations we're going to change how it is you reach those expectations so there are seven of you and there are seven days of the week perhaps everyone takes a day and that is their day to personally respond to emails that arrive that day quality responses only I can provide you with some sentence starters if you don't know how to respond something like Miss McIntyre thanks for reaching out dot dot dot I actually don't know why
050insert my concern I will ask blank in the central office about this and get back to you by blank I think my point has been made this is obviously not just about one email that did not get addressed the position of public trust that you wanted and that you hold is eroding and all of you need to step up your level of performance your report card would say you are not meeting expectations thank you for those comments Miss McIntyre the next speaker our last in-person speaker is going to be Miss Ian Emily yen [Music] um hello my name is Dr Emily again I am a staff researcher and arpa coordinator at the Virginia Education Association I would like to provide some clarity about permissible uses of arpa funding since there seemed to be some confusion
051during the October 27th meeting per item 137 paragraph 45 chapter 2 of the 2022 special session one acts of of the Virginia assembly um 130 million 122 981 dollars of arpa funding from the slrf portion was given to provide one thousand dollar one-time bonuses for soq funded positions um well the school board has discretion on how they distribute that thousand dollars if they give it to just soq funded positions or if they um give it to other staff this money can only be used for um one-time staff bonuses so it can't be used for other purposes um so I would highly encourage you to give a full 1 000 bonuses to all full-time acps staff as proposed during the last meeting um there are it is permissible I know that there is about a million
052a little bit over a million dollars or a million and a half dollars that needed to make up that Gap um since uh since there wasn't funding for non-soq funded positions um it is permissible to use sr2 and sr3 arpa funds that were given to the Lea um and as of the end of October there was for four million 404 and 202 000 so almost four and a half million dollars so you could use the other two and sr3 funds for that Top-Up so please um take this into consideration um as you bought on this item thank you [Music] thank you for those comments Dr Young the last speaker is going to be a zoom participant so hopefully this goes smoothly it's going to be Leslie good Miss Johnston is she logged on [Music] this
053good we can see you [Music] and not hear you [Music] foreign [Music] can you hear me yep we can hear you now okay okay so I want to start by saying that I have two children within the Albemarle County School District they are thriving both socially and academically however when my nine-year-old comes home asking why there are more than two genders and what does sexual identity mean that makes me highly concerned these children are entirely too young to even understand what the Albemarle County School Board is trying to protect them from in my opinion this is nothing more than adult politics being forced you're are you hearing me I'm sorry I'm getting feedback we can definitely hear you okay thank you um in my opinion this is nothing more than adult politics being sourced upon
054our children with no parental consent I do have a question for the board in our latest email that parents received we got bored that we were to celebrate solidarity week which is for the lgbtq community to feel more safe within our environment at school I am very unsure as to when any of these students who sexually identified differently have ever felt unsafe in comparison to children who identify as male or female and I guess I missed the memo as to when that was ever an issue my final question is if this is is the is how we are perceiving different groups of people when does the Coalition of straight white children get their week of honor and protection to me my children are taught to love everyone regardless of race or any other factor I
055do not feel that it is appropriate to be instilling in prepubescent children [Music] issues of sexual identity when there aren't any issues to be had thank you for your time thank you for those comments miss good so that concludes our public comment thank you to everyone who took the time to sign up and speak I know it's um takes courage sometimes so thank you all now we're moving on thank you we will now move to our state of the division and this portion of the agenda will be led by Dr McLaughlin [Music] foreign [Music] good evening board members I'm Pat McLaughlin assistant superintendent for strategic planning and I'm pleased to be with you tonight to present our annual state of the division report [Music] so the state of the division report is a look back
056at the work we completed in the 2021-2022 school year around our strategic plan learning for all the plan is Guided by our vision that our Learners are engaged in authentic challenging and relevant learning experiences becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our Dynamic and diverse society and our mission that working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds and we will know every student it's also Guided by our values of equity Excellence family and community and wellness and by our three strategic goals thriving students empowering communities in Equitable and transformative resources so those three goals have a total of nine
057objectives 47 strategies to meet the goals in 64 metrics to measure our progress so when you've got over a hundred strategies and metrics the strategic planning team really needed to consider a way to share our progress updates with the board our school staff and a commute and our community members in a way that was accessible and made sense to everyone so to that end we've had a team working over the past several months to create an interactive web presence for our annual report and I'm happy to share a few highlights of that with you tonight so the state of the division report uh is all web-based now and it starts on our state of the division page where you can uh you know you're greeted by a letter from Dr Haas uh brother write your
058letter by Dr Haas I think this year he has a lot to a lot of accomplishments there and he had a lot to highlight uh in there you've got links to all of our strategic plans uh from the past years over here and I'll take you over to our strategic plan for 2022. this gives a brief update of of what the plan is and why it's important to us but then it also on the left hand side outlines each one of the nine objectives that we have for our three goals by clicking on any of those objectives and I'll take you to objective one point one you can see our strategies this objective had six strategies that were there and each of these strategies can be opened up so you can get a brief update
059on the work that was done in support of that strategy over the past year for example one of our strategies for our first objective that will ensure that each student is supported to achieve their best we wanted to implement comprehensive School Improvement support teams with representatives from all relevant departments and in the 2122 school year we developed a structure for school Improvement plan teams to guide them toward common goals strategies and metrics and all Improvement plans we continue to refine the school Improvement plan structure to align with Improvement templates provided by the Virginia Department of Education and we implemented School Improvement Triad teams of principals that attended quarterly meetings summer school Improvement meetings and sip check-ins every couple of months so whenever you like you can go through that and open up any of these
060to look at the work that we did over the past a couple of years over the past year on the right hand side you see all of the metrics associated with that objective things like on-time graduation rate increase in reading skills our Sol performance and if you click on The View objective metrics down here it'll take you to a page where you can access all of those metrics one of the things that I think is a great process Improvement for our state of the division report this year is that it's now interactive and so looking at one of our metrics Sol Pass rates which we've discussed with the board a couple of times you can come to this site and you can break this out this is a metric that looks at our division Pass
061rates versus our versus the state Pass rates you can change subjects so you can see English reading English writing history and social studies mathematics or science and then you can break out by our different reporting groups so you can click on a group and see how our Hispanic Latino kids did compared to the state how are economically disadvantaged kids did compared to the state it also has multiple representations of that data this looks at all of the groups at once and you can break it out by different years and different subjects this looks at our comparison uh to the state one of the other uh interactive features uh that I think you'll find useful in here is our Equity table for the past several years we've had a division Equity table that looks at a
062few of our key metrics such as chronic absenteeism Sol Pass rates and kids who are earning Advanced Studies diplomas and in the past we've been able to look at this at the division level this year we've updated that so you can go through and you can select any school in the division to see where they stand in terms of their Equity table as a just a reminder to the board and to those listening in the audience at home the First Column here shows the percentage of of each of our membership groups in terms of our total demographic so we have eight percent Asian students African-American students 29 Hispanic Latino students and then you can go across and wherever the numbers are different there's a a disparity in proportionality with that and so this allows folks
063to see all of any of our schools uh and where they stand as well as the division report for that so we've we've built out a site that is uh we think very user friendly uh and very Interactive but still we've got um dozens and dozens of metrics that are in there and so for the state of the division report uh while all of those 64 metrics are important we wanted to focus in on 14 of what we call Key metrics that we are going to use as uh as kind of a baseline Year from 2122 and Report onto the board each year to see if we're making progress toward our goals and tonight I'll spend some time highlighting uh what those key metrics are that we'll watch over the next five years so our
064first set of metrics is for our thriving students goal and there are six metrics there the first is our on-time graduation rate and our goal is to be equal to or higher than the state average for all of our reporting groups and for our rates to continue to increase year over year this chart shows our 2122 graduation rates compared to the state average and that we are meeting our goal of beating the state in all of those categories the second key metric is Sol achievement we want to close achievement gaps and also have Pass rates for each of our reporting groups be equal to or higher than the state as we've reported to the board recently this is an area identified for improvement in the division as we are meeting meeting our goal in 12
065or 45 possible categories green on this chart indicates that we're better than the state yellow is equal and red lower than the state averages course failures each year are based on data from 2122 shows that 7.55 percent of our middle school students in 12.03 of our high school students had at least one failing grade for the end for a year and grade last year this chart also shows the proportionality of who has failing grades compared to our division demographics this year we hope to lower the percentage the total percentage of failures and bring more proportionality to this table and I know I'm moving through this rather quickly all of these tables are accessible in the state of the division site to dig into uh a little bit more the next metric that we want to
066share with you is one we've shared with you also in the past are Elementary reading dashboard this shows by quarter the percentage of students at each grade level who are meeting mealing or below are reading benchmarks we will look for the percentage of students meeting benchmarks to increase each year just as a quick refresher to the board this is when we gave a presentation about this this is one of those metrics where they the bar gets higher each quarter for students to to hit that it's not one set bar for first grade and second grade and third grade it changes each quarter which is why you see some fluctuation in that key metric number five is our Panorama student survey results we hope to see the percent favorable increase each year and to move closer
067to the top of national averages students take this survey twice per year and this chart shows the favorable responses and National percentiles for each category in the survey a green field indicates a move toward a move to a higher National percentile from the fall to the spring and the yellow field indicates an area that stayed at the same level in our final metric in this objective is our Fidelity to both our homework and Grading policies there are a number of questions asked to students in a survey each year that help us tell how we're doing these policies this gives just a couple of examples one of them is asked if you were assigned homework over winter break which we ask folks not to do the grading question asks about questions like do I understand how
068my grades are calculated do I understand which assignments will be counted in my final grade do teachers include things like effort or participation or homework in our final grade all of those are connected to our uh to our grading and our homework policies and we look for affirmative answers to increase year over year goal two is our empowering community's goal and that has four key metrics the first of these is the percentage of licensed staff who have earned a culturally responsive teaching credential at the end of the 2122 school year that number is at 22 percent and our staff and our goal and those 22 percent of our staff and our goal is 100 completion by the 25-26 school year [Music] the second metric is to have demographics of our teaching staff be proportional to
069our student body this chart shows our current state in the 2122 school year with the lighter blue color being our student population in the darker blue color being our teaching staff each year we'll look for proportionality to increase uh so those bars start to line up student strengths and areas of need as they relate to Social and emotional learning the decimal rates each student is having SEL as a strength being at typical levels or being an area for improvement last year in the pilot year we administered Dessa to students in grade 2 7 and 9 and that will expand this year to include grapes one through four and grades seven through ten and next year to grades one through eleven we hope each year to reduce the number of students who have a need for
070instruction in this area and increase the number of students who show this as a strength final metric for this goal is to Panorama family survey as with the student survey these results show our percent favorable in our national percentile rank last year we had 2 144 responses from our families and each year we hope to increase participation and raise our positive responses and percentiles and our third goal is Equitable resources which also has four key metrics the 21-22 school year our goal is to increase our teacher retention rate each year the second metric are the results from our Gallup Employee Engagement survey each year we hope to see a decrease in respondents who are actively disengaged in the increase in our percentage of engaged employees and the third metric is the percentage of our Capital
071requests that are funded each year through the CIP these are reported in five-year increments our Baseline data is the funded CIP for fiscal years 23 through 27. we had a request of about 275 million dollars we had an adopted CIP of about 153 million dollars which is about a 55 percent uh funded CIP for that five-year period and the final key metric of this goal focuses on building our building capacities we have uh mitigation plans in place for all of our schools that are over capacity and hope to decrease the number of schools that are over capacity each year so as we conclude I feel that it's important for the state of the division report to include some highlights from our year that might not be reflected just in looking at metrics we accomplished a
072great deal on the 21-22 school year and I'd like to share some of those highlights with you first of all we fully reopened our schools following the shutdown that began in March of 2020. we established the acps human resources department that is dedicated to Albemarle County Public Schools we supported the establishment of the Albemarle foundation for Education a philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting our schools we opened a new addition to Crozet Elementary School in our department of Technology installed a total of 1075 display boards that every learning space in acps now has state-of-the-art display technology we held a dozen Community engagement forms with students staff and community members and began a community budget input Forum as well which has continued into this year the Department of Instruction launched a division professional Learning Community model that
073allowed teachers to work with their colleagues throughout the division developing curriculum Frameworks and for the first time we implemented division wide common mid-year assessments across all of our schools and perhaps one of the best ways however to understand how we put our strategic plan into action is to see what's happening in our schools and departments and to help with that I'd like to share a video of how that highlights some of our outstanding experiences that we brought to our school communities in the last year foreign students like Eli and Ori are sprucing up their math skills after pandemic learning laws in students across Admiral County and they say it's getting competitive I come over is a card game that has four numbers on each card and your target goal is to always make 24. Chancellor
074Meriweather Lewis are gearing up for tournament five minus three equals two two plus two equals four four times six equals 20. you can use any four of the operations addition subtraction multiplication and division so 24 is a game that helps develop computational fluency and what we know in our schooling and in early numeracy is that it's the foundation to higher order thinking I studied for like a week at home playing my mom and dad and I kept beating them since the kids can be adults now it's time to compete against one another and it's a pretty competitive game and also makes like helps you learn math fast and like do it on your head really fast which I got really good at now that I I played 24. while the sun isn't as bonus in
075past years this game has improved Sol scores the students back in person it's a tool that they're using again what I notice is that as we build confidence it helps shift that math mindset and what goes along with that confidence is competence a group of eighth grade students at Henry Middle School in Crozet play second in Nationals in the recent We the People competition annual We the People competitions are sponsored by the center for civic education this year's schools who made Nationals attended virtually faculty at Henley Middle School are proud of their students and explain how this feat might shape them as Citizens for us I think the overall goal is just to create students who are more invested in our community in Civics in developing an understanding of how the government is impacting them
076and what they can do local students have collected over 11 000 pounds of food for the Blue Ridge area Food Bank the 2022 School of food drive was the most successful in its 11 year history the food collected will provide 849 meals to the hungry the fundraising effort was led by Albemarle High School students cat ravishandram and Emily Warren it's a day where we culminate celebrating Black History Month by honoring Martin Luther King Jr and each year a student from each grade level is nominated by their teachers and their peers have a part in this as well and they nominate someone who exemplifies all that Martin Luther King Jr himself stood for and shared with us and that we admire about him today we celebrate our our diversity at Woodbrook and so to welcome families
077in today to be here and to hear the words from the classroom teachers describing how their children exemplify these qualities is really special when I heard about that I was proud and I knew I was doing the right thing for being a leader to the community I love to help my friends them help me and I helped them maybe they if I'd be nice I'd be kind I don't be mean I will help some people we all usually have a box of tissue with us because it's very moving and meaningful to this school and to our community [Music] when Albemarle County school with many students using free and reduced lunch options has a unique new way to help feed children a new community garden championed by the building goodness foundation and Piedmont Master Gardeners is
078officially open students at Greer Elementary are fostering their green thumbs and taking the food home after the Harvest carrot Blair a lot of the students live in apartment buildings and they don't have a lot of access to Nature and to growing things many of the warm weather veggies will be ready to take home by the end of this school year as it is a class Where It prepares you for high school and college so you know what to expect and how to expect it part of the Avid curriculum for 8th grade they had to think of a community service project and so this is the first year that we actually took a community service project I did and put it into effect so they were thinking about different types of events that they could do
079some of them weren't possible at this time like a bake sale or so forth but they had thought about a walkathon we had to decide on a charity and that's where we went from there the students did all the work they contacted via they contacted the teachers and staff to let them know about the walk they made Flyers they made a sponsor sheet we learned a lot of organization skills and we learned how to work with others a lot because it you know took a lot of us to be able to put this together every year for the last 19 years we've been part of the American Heart Association jump rope and hoopsville heart now it's called kids heart Challenge and we've raised over 201 thousand dollars in the last 19 years the kids really
080enjoy it every grade kindergarten through fifth grade we do our jump rope and basketball units during the fundraising campaign and we talk a lot about the heart as February is heart month as well we've been raising money for children who have heart diseases and helping them out a little bit this year we've raised seven thousand and eighty four dollars in the last five weeks we talked about the American Heart Association and what it is and what what we raise money for and we talk about how it saves life and the science behind how they know so much more about the heart now and surgeries and Education and Research than they did before I just like to raise money to help people and it's good to donate to something really important and I would say the
081kids heart challenge is really important [Music] if students aren't coming to class excited then I'm doing it wrong the sixth grade science teacher at Lakeside Middle School she's wrapping up the school year on a high note she was named educator of the Year by non-profit Charlottesville business Innovation Council this award honors a local kindergarten through 12th grade teacher who incorporates Innovation entrepreneurship and technological achievement in the classroom Anderson has found success by implementing video games during class Time Minecraft especially has been so valuable Minecraft Anderson says teaches students how to survive in a three-dimensional world she says the game has promoted teamwork and student achievement especially throughout coved even when I was teaching virtually I could open up a Minecraft room and kids could join from their home and we could all be in the
082same virtual space together working on things together and with a team Zachary one of our students right now we're working on an element escape room and his PR Armand are creating virtual scientific experiments that would be rather dangerous to perform in the classroom like we can build like a volcano or an explosion in Minecraft and it wouldn't actually physically destroy anything he says Anderson's class one of my most favorite classes um she's an amazing teacher and she lets us like she actually lets us do this sort of stuff it's a really important to the school and the faculty and staff that our grounds are kept nice and clean during the school year you know it's a time in the school year where we want to be outdoors and what we've been through for the last
083two years has encouraged for more outdoor activity so you know having our grounds and a position that they look that they do and they are nice and hubcap is important to our staff and our employees are the ones that should be appreciated for that they spend many many hours you know they come out of the winter months of working snow removal Duty and different working on equipment and then you know we get into mowing season typically a pretty busy day I mean you've got to kind of you got to kind of like being outside I mean because we're outside when it's hot we're outside when it's cold I mean it's uh but you know the guys I got I got a really good crew guys that come in work hard for us and take pride
084in what they're doing and couldn't make we couldn't ask for a better uh what a group of guys I'd like to thank all of our employees for rising to the challenges of the past two years and continuing to do all the things we do for our schools on a daily basis when you ask someone about the school or when you picture a school usually you think of probably the playground possibly the principal's office but very seldom you think about the school nurse's office during the pandemic we have really started to realize how important our School nurses are on an ordinary day of doing an ordinary year they would probably be dispensing medicine to students or taking care of some of the ill kids the during covet that really had to become an experts at things
085that they weren't experts at before I'm Crystal Jackson and I'm the school nurse for Jack Jewett Middle School I've always done OB GYN or Pediatrics so this is just kind of right in the realm of it you are not just a nurse You're a teacher and you are that that role model for them or that mother figure for them and so some kids don't take things as well as others so you just have to kind of calm them down and let them know that you know you're here to help them and that it's going to be okay foreign [Music] school lunch hero day and our school cafeteria workers are definitely the unsung heroes in the school I believe they are working hard every day and have every single day since March of 2020 when the
086schools everyone shut down but we kept working we were in the schools preparing meals our love is for the children to see their faces and to know that we are providing something that's essential to the school day a lot of hard work but fulfilling because we know that if some some of the kids this is their only meal during the day so I feel that even though it's been challenging this year it's worth it at the end because the kids are happy and they're fed we are just very very grateful for the staff that we have and how they're so dedicated to come in every day work hard and do it for the students Albemarle County Public Schools buying its first type A buses to help with the driver shortage the director of Transportation says
087they bought two of the vehicles and they'll be used starting this fall the bus can seat up to 14 students each type a bus costs about 75 000 so the big ones are about 125. Charmaine white from the Department of Transportation says here's the big thing drivers are not required to have a commercial driver's license to drive the vehicle you don't need a CDL she says they hope this helps with the driver shortage as they're still about 15 people short or the community climate collaborative and the Virginia Discovery Museum teamed up with the upper Morrow County school science teachers putting together climate action kits for students in the area CBS 19's Franklin Spain joins us in the studio live with more on this unique collaboration Franklin Rick they put together these climate action activities kids
088for fourth graders enrolled in Albemarle County public schools that will benefit over 800 students these kits will include solar powered night lamps that will charge by the sun they are they will be able to grow their own garden with the seeds that are included with these kids students will get a better understanding of Home energy director Communications of C3 Terry Kent says the kids will be able to put an energy scavenger hunt together and use these tools to help them learn more about natural resources we're going to take these kids home they're going to interact with them and talk about energy and all that sinking in and it's really making that connection so that they can lead and and do better sometimes trees are both kind of because if you cut them all of them
089they won't grow back far like go back really fast um you can turn off your lights when you're not using them because then like your bill will go down and you don't have to pay much you can ride your bike to school instead of taking a bus there'll be that Family Partnership where they can teach their families what they're learning and help their family get involved as well to have an impact on the community thank you so Mr Page I forgot to tell you you had a little bit of a starring role in our video this year but you did a great job there so so we show that again just to uh to emphasize this just to emphasize what this looks like in our school when we talk about talk about engaging and empowering
090our communities and we talk about Equitable and transformative resources and so as we wrap up tonight's presentation I would be remiss if I didn't um uh give credit where credit is due this was really a team effort to build out this website to build out the videos to collect all of this uh the metric data and I really want to make sure we we thank the following people Lauren Hunt Jamie Gellner India Han Dallas hit Chris Gilman Sarah dusenberry Mark Leach Sam de lesso Phil giromita Helen Dunn Patrick Huddleston and that's uh folks from our communication team from our strategic planning team from our department of Technology who really worked hard to get this together for everyone and so that's uh the end of the presentation I'll be happy to take any questions [Music] foreign
091state of the division with respect to the dashboard and that the school specific data I mean I guess the issue is how are we giving the feedback to the schools and how is this a living document a working document so it's a number of ways one is that we've got uh so no I'm sorry Wednesday we'll present the state of the division 12 leadership team so they see all the different elements that are in there that's all of our directors that's all of our principals uh superintendent's cabinet are in there as well and what you see in here uh is is pulled we have I think a really wonderful uh position in our department of Technology with Sarah dusenberry who uses a program called Power bi to build out any kind of dashboard that uh
092that we ask for as long as you can get access to the data and so when you see things like the um uh the Sol chart that is uh that's up there or the uh the failing grade chart that's up there those actually come from that power bi program and principals have access to even more robust reports through Power bi and we do workshops with them during their school Improvement meetings during principles meetings to remind them that all of this is out there the strategic planning Team Works quite closely with them to to not only show them what exists but also to get feedback from them about what would be helpful uh how would they want to see their data presented so they can make it very actionable in terms of student achievement and improvements
093[Music] so I have a one piece of feedback I appreciate that our state of the division is is constantly evolving and I think evolving generally in a positive direction I think if we go back a few years it was like a you know a five-page PDF document um but with this one I almost feel like um some of the information is really deeply embedded and hard to pull out so at the like a minimum critique would be if we could get it in like a one like so you can control F and find something so in particular the equity dashboard which for years has been a really quick tool to look at both for the community and even as a school board member and see like here are the metrics is actually pretty hard to
094find in the current setup so um well I appreciate the level of granularity as you dive into it it's hard to pull out some of those key pieces of information yeah I agree I think that was that was a challenge we were trying to find solutions to as well when we have so many uh strategies and metrics to report on I will check in with our technique team about uh like a search ability feature uh on there if we can add it we certainly will or even an executive summary on each topic that's right yep three sentences yeah because then to be I hesitate to say this because I know how much I would rather have all the information here but to find the the um even the Sol you had to go to you
095had to know the objective objective 1.1 then you had to go and look and if you scroll to the bottom you have to see the metrics button click on the metrics button and then there's like a 20 menu thing there to find the so yeah so we could build we could build a metrics um just a metrics page on there we have them all in front of you and you could uh and you could link out to them that would be great and I know for here we have the information for us but in terms of like having the community be able to really quickly see I I was really proud of how we had the equity dashboard and like those key metrics you know the on-time graduation the AP credits the third grade Sol
096scores for reading I'd like to be able to get those quickly are there other questions or comments or members of the report I think that this is going to be a great tool for all sorts of different parties whether their Administration whether they're teachers whether they're parents whether they're other staff uh whether the community at large you know I know that coming in the last couple of years it's been hard to get a lot of the information and and in some ways this is like a baseline to build on and to move forward with and get feedback you know like Katrina is doing from members of the public and so um and it's it's a great job and it's going to help us when it comes to getting granular when we're doing the budget uh
097in the in the coming few months so thank you thank you very much I'm Dr Miller McLaughlin and the team another question I've never done no I mean I would love to see our goals incorporating that our recent goals our achievement goals in terms of what we want to see oh for the the Sol pass right now I know there are a lot of goals Incorporated this is also the achievement the specific targets that we're looking to meet um and I know this is nitpicky but it's just like I've been on the board enough years that it's like you lose track of what you have the prior conversation if the information is presented differently the next year and then differently the year after and then you lose track of what you're you're trying to make
098profit that's right and that's where we hope this this solves right so so when you see those um 13 to 14 key metrics that we have we want to keep bringing those back in the same format each year to say here's where we were 21-22 here's where we are 22 23 here's where we are 23 24 and see that we're that we're making progress toward those goals okay thank you I want to I want to thank all of you for your feedback we um I really want to give Dr McLaughlin some accolades because he just remembering going through this process of developing a strategic plan our previous plan was really just the shell of a plan didn't really have specific strategies it didn't have objectives it didn't have anything tied to in terms of metrics
099and that's why every year you kind of just solve you know lots of different things and we were just I think modeling through for consensus so his his vision has been to tie the Strategic plan to accountability and the other piece that that you've noticed I know is that in our budget document the one that we have for this year all ties back to the Strategic plan and that'll be the same moving forward so for the next four years these these metrics the baselines that you saw tonight those were the ones are that we'll be reporting on it won't be a moving Target in other words um I want to also advertise that uh at Virginia School Board Association next week Grant page and Patrick and I will be presenting on our strategic plan it'll
100be the third time we presented on it we did it up in Washington DC we did it for a national audience with Patel for kids a couple weeks ago and I think this will be the this will be the curtain call I hope for our for for this presentation but um the other thing is we are working on a one-page a one-pager we call it like a one-pager document that we can have out like when we go out and hit the road on uh to meet with uh different groups I am starting up um a new listening tour that'll just kind of be a forever listening tour each month I'm going to meet at a different school and it'll be with either students it'll be with uh parents or it will be with staff members
101and the times of the day that I'll do it will will fluctuate so that those different groups can can meet with me and I'm going to invite board members that are in in that magisterial District just to to hear what people say and the last thing I wanted to say was um I do know that this is also the kind of the evaluation season for the board for your policy so this tool this the the Strategic plan report state of the division is an opportunity for you to use that as you go through and do your own evaluation and I'm glad that you brought up the metrics piece you know the targets those interim targets but the board set I'm planning on the last Saturday in June hosting I'm going to be calling it you
102know a retreat a staff Retreat a cabinet Retreat and I'm going to invite invite board members to that Retreat if we if we have all the board we'll or if we have a quorum we'll call a board meeting if we have a handful of board members we'll still proceed and what we plan on doing is taking uh you know taking out this strategic plan information again but also looking at our projected results for the Sol test for the current year and settings revisiting our own targets and maybe setting new targets so for example we talk about having our the diversity of our staff match the diversity of our students we don't really have targets for that we just say like you heard Patrick say we want those bars to line up in in four years
103I guess or however long it takes but the board could say hey we want to see it move by a percentage and designate an interim Target for that year so that we go through and my hope is that after we have that meeting last Saturday we'll have a set of draft interim targets not a ton of them but you know a few for each objective and then we can bring that back to the board for the July meeting to kick around and you know determine you really want to go next with it so I did want to add those things just by way of closing the loop on on the process so thank you right thank you Pat thank you thank you Dr McLaughlin and Koss we will now take a 10-minute break [Music] uh
104I call our meeting back to order we will now move to our next agenda item in our five year Financial forecast led by mishmet right good evening I'm Roslyn Schmidt Chief Operating Officer this next agenda item is a continuation of your last Works last month's work session is focused on long-range planning and budget development so as a reminder this work is in support of goal three of the Strategic plan Equitable Transformer Resources with the objectives of developing modern and environmentally sustainable facilities infrastructure and equipment and providing resources in an equitable manner that transforms learning experiences and opportunities for all students the purpose of this agenda item is to review the five-year Financial forecast and provide feedback for the fy24 budget development we will start by concluding our discussion on the CIP and request that you
105take action in preparation for the joint board meeting with the Board of Supervisors next month we will then transition to a discussion on our operating budget and the five-year Outlook and lastly if time allows we would like to get your feedback on the fy24 budget development if we do not have time for that last item we will discuss that at the next business meeting with that introduction I will now hand it over to Maya kumazawa our director of budget and planning [Music] good evening the first section that we'll cover today is a follow-up to the work session we had two weeks ago discussing the five-year CIP request this evening we're recommending that you take action on this request in preparation for the joint work session as discussed so this slide is a summary of the
106full CIP request including projects recommended by the long-range planning advisory committee and ongoing programs that include maintenance and replacement programs the projects are listed in priority order and per your discussion last time at the work session we have included the new project Lambs Lane campus improvements as priority number four when previously it was unranked at the bottom of the slide we show the capital needs assessment projects or those projects recommended for years six through ten and please note that High School Center 2 and Mountain View expansion funding is included and the FY 23 budget for the current year so it's not shown as part of the future request acidy I wanted to remind you that we do have 32.5 million dollars in FY 23 for the construction of a high school Center and that amount
107can be carried forward in addition there is a project in a capital needs assessment to address further high school capacity concerns for years 6 through 10. and this slide shows you the need for that these are the high school enrollment projections and related capacity conflicts for the next 10 years enrollment at our high schools continues to grow steadily and the bottom row on this slide illustrates the overall capacity conflict when including our three comprehensive high schools and one high school Center you can see that Center 2 May address the capacity conflict in the first five years but another project will be required for the second five years these capacity figures do not reflect the current trailers at each site which are providing temporary capacity at this time as discussed at our last work session if
108we were to assume low Revenue changes in the CIP and if we had to build a CIP with no new funding then we would have approximately 148 million dollars over the next five years so on this side are the highest priority projects that we could move forward with given a baseline level of funding this includes full funding for elementary school number one and partial funding for elementary school number two and also partial funding for all of our ongoing programs while some funding was provided for high school Renovations in the currently adopted CIP this project would not be included in this scenario due to increased cost estimates at our two elementary schools [Music] a formal approval of our CIP has been requested by the Board of Supervisors in anticipation for our work in December are there
109any questions to either of the plans presented and when ready is there a motion to approve these requests just declare I'm sorry just to clarify um the one that uh we're being asked to approve tonight is the one that does not have the uh the renovations in it is that correct um you're being uh that asked to approve two scenarios one being the full request that does include the renovations and then the second scenario would be sort of that Baseline funding request perfect thank you [Music] for the balance CIP I guess I uh stud the question and I'm sorry if I'm forgetting the answer of how do we account for the projected increase in expenses for the high school funds that we've already been allocated for high school Center two remember we talked about about
110the presentation on how cost or like a 25 more than we're expecting and we already have that money allocated but we reasonably can anticipate it's going to cost more than what we were given and we were talking about potentially folding that in or no that doesn't seem to be the case it's not on this so so right now um we have a base amount allocated that we can move forward if that number needs to go up we would bring that forward as part of next Falls CIP process okay and that should give us the timing should work out that we would stay on schedule okay great thank you and you asking for a motion to approve those two items right yes is there do we have a motion I guess I'm still not clear I
111thought we were going to do two different motions one for the CIP request summary right we do we need to okay so we need so I I move that we approved the CIP request summary as presented second missed alcaro second by Ms Lee that we approve the CIP request summary as a as presented to us any discussion on the motion discussion Ms Johnston [Music] Miss Osborne yes Miss Carlson yes Miss Lee yes Mr O'Carroll yes Dr Acuff yes Mr Page yes Commission carry motion carries so we do approve the CIP request summary we need a second motion on um materials to be presented [Music] could you show us that slide again [Music] do we have a motion in regards to the scenario shown here [Music] yeah I'm fine to make a motion on the balance
112one that's right we're asking for right emotion on the balance CIP projection yeah I'm fine to make that motion I move that we um approved the um CIP balanced project scenario for the Board of Supervisors second move by Miss Carlson second by Ms Osborne that we approved the CIP um balanced priority projects balance projects any discussion on the motion I remain trouble that we are once again eliminating any renovation funding for our schools um the average age of our core schools is about a half a century and this is an area that you know consistently zero out um and and I share that I share that feeling because basically by giving back what was approved last year for high school Renovations we're bidding against ourselves in in this and um rather than in the other
113one where we're asking for full amounts and then we'll work it through and figure out what are the real top priorities and what can be afforded by the county and by the schools um I have a lot of reservations about bidding against ourselves just to add to I mean under the under the code we we have we submit what we need we are funding request is what do we need to keep going as a School Division the usual process has been then the the county will say well we hear you but this is all the money you get and then we cut budget we're being asked to do both steps at once and I'm very uncomfortable with this change in policy add to him really uncomfortable with the high school Renovations being left out we've
114had that request on the table probably for at least the last five six years and for it to not be included again is really really troubling even worse it's it was approved last year and we're giving it back and and uh that that just doesn't make sense to me for the discussion so then do you think we would just present the needs based which is what which is what the Virginia code asks of us we submit a funding request based on our needs as we best can determine and then we negotiate at some point but they are asking us to do both sides of the equation do we know why they're asking us for two pardon do we know why they're asking us for two scenarios to cut time or Miss Miss Schmidt do you
115know or have an answer to any of that know what your highest priorities are would be my education we've told them with passage of the first set of budget yeah all of course the answer is all of it in the past there's been the CIP oversight committee and then the CIP advisory committee and this year without real warning because I've talked to the other two members today who are the public from the public and the one other official they were not aware of the fact that the CIP AC was eliminated for this year and um and under advice of council that that is a joint board not it doesn't report to the supervisors it doesn't report to us it's a joint board and that's where a lot of the negotiations and and uh you know
116took place over the years [Music] so then I guess I would have a process question as well so they want us to submit this prioritized balanced one and is that because they're no longer going to have I mean Kate references the negotiations happening before is the fear that if we don't submit a balanced one then they're going to make the decision on which ones are priorities are like well I mean are they they're going to pick how much money to allocate towards things are they going to pick do they I just I guess I'm curious why what's the process going to look like is because if you're saying those meetings aren't going to happen anymore then this is the meeting right now where we kind of decide what well they would say when we have
117a bottom line on the on the priorities that we've already passed and they will say well that here's this much money and then we it would come back to us is if as it has always before and we would make the adjustments if we had to um they would not they're not authorized to be in a position to make the specific Cuts we are okay but their their role is to give us the budget and they're asking us to unilaterally without full budget numbers to make cuts and I'm I'm not willing to do that yeah I'm not sure why we're doing it different this year as opposed to previous years unless it's just they asked us to and is there more logic behind that or not do either of our representatives from the CIP committee
118have any input into that any answer for that the only only input no we have not had input into that and you know that first notice that any of us on the board received that the Joint Committee process was being changed was the letter that was sent to the full board in September foreign such notice was as Mr Alcoa said such notice was not provided to Our Community member or to the plan and commission member they found out about it today so through jono so I think there is a process issue I mean maybe this is a better process but it seems to me given that it was a joint advisory committee um the decision should have been made jointly so I guess my question would be if we don't move forward with offering them
119what they requested is their is it possible or likely I guess as well would be a question that they look at this and say because I know they've been upset before that we're you know asking for everything and not being reasonable with what we can actually get could they look and say okay fine you know Elementary School one and two that's what we'll put in there you guys can't narrow it down for us so we'll just cap it right there you know I don't think that's going to happen I mean I'm just asking because I don't want to I don't I don't think these are unreasonable folks who are going to be dealing with and I and I think something is going to get worked out I mean I have 100 confidence in that but
120you know as I've I've been saying for us to eliminate it on our own is giving it back when we haven't been asked to give it back or and we don't know what the budget numbers are that are available you know for us and and as we go back and forth you know because this is the first time I've ever seen the CIP numbers go down you know and we're and we're being asked to cut our own budget yeah cut the the numbers that have already been approved last year and so um I think the CIP request uh request summary says exactly in order what the most with the highest priority are Elementary School one Elementary School school two High School Renovations lamb late Lambs Lane Middle School Renovations Elementary School Renovations and so forth
121in order so then my follow-up question would be what about the line items the the basic ones project management but bus transportation the network technology so those ones if we were to just present them with the request summary How do they how do they know that those ones are also basically need to be Givens um does that make sense like having the one two three that makes it seem like those are 10 11 12 and 13 on this list we can present that they used to always be up top we can do that again but what happens there is then you lose focus on what your number one project is we can work on the graphic of that we intentionally don't don't rank those because you they are typically a given as far as a
122prioritization but we can today I mean we do have a three-hour budget discussion meeting with the supervisors on December 7th so these questions can be we can make we can discuss this and it seems to me that's what I was wondering too what um although we haven't taken a vote what the repercussions will be for that meeting on December the 7th so if we well I guess we'll have to see then that what that would be after we take the vote great because I can see our problems and I don't think that the vote is going to eliminate any of those and it won't eliminate really what we are discussing so that would have to be an item that we discussed on December the 7th with them and I I think additionally we should as
123a board identify what our priorities are not in terms of the specific projects but what we want to accomplish in the meeting with the supervisors okay all right well are we ready for the question then are we ready to vote any other discussion on the motion I guess I'll I'll make my comment which is that I yield to the expertise of the two people who have sat on the CIP committee for a long time and it sounds like this process is um not favorable to us and it's not necessary and we can discuss it more with them on the seventh however I guess I would point out that I have heard as a reoccurring issue frustration with the process and how it occurred in the past which is that we present a really big number
124no one's and it's never it and it's never paired they seem to be expressing it's never paired down or prioritized in a way so I guess I see where they're coming from in terms of their like can you give us something that you know is going to be more aligned with the amount that you're going to get and is prioritized and I know like oberg in particular has always been very vocal about how we should just um not not play into that and just tell them what we need the need space so I mean I yield your expertise but I um I don't think it's too unreasonable to ask for like two versions of it but I get what you're saying and we can discuss it hopefully on the seventh with them I think we'll
125end up with with a version that will be focused on how much money they have available that's what they always do it but [Music] but there's usually a process of back and forth and this is just back that's the thing for me understanding that project management on down are basically Givens we have given them that in our request summary with one and two I mean it's Duty it's in numbers I mean like I think we have given them in that CIP request summary the same thing I mean we just locked it off so I you know as what with what Katrina said I will defer to the uh expertise of the people who have served on that committee okay I think we're ready for the vote so this Johnston [Music] Ms Carlson no Miss Osborne
126no Mr alcaro no Dr akov hello Mr Page no motion failed okay so before we move forward then um I guess we as a board then can draft a letter to them to let them know that this will be presented on December the 7th so that they will not be caught unawares of this so we'll we'll draft I'll let I'll request that our two CIP members draft a letter to be reviewed by the board and then we'll send that to the supervisors yes it needs to be uh come from the from the board not just from the two of us right yeah right I'm just saying yeah okay so then they'll be prepared for this and it won't be something that they are not expecting Mr Page I would add that um we did have
127our our CIP meeting today the the committee and we did talk about doing that uh put putting together just sort of a point by point because the there are several requests within the letter that came from the Board of Supervisors so we we still have it's still about a month away so we figured we could go ahead and respond and I think it is for whatever it's worth my opinion is it is a good idea to let them know that how you are responding to the request to limit the CIP request to the number that they had provided um the only thing I would do if you would indulge me is um just a little perspective on the process when I when I first came to the central office in 2009 the process was very
128very different it was very different um what would happen was the school system would make a list of all the like a wish list just like sort of like you do now it went out many more years too and it would have all the CIP items that the board wanted to try to fund and it went into sort of a black box it was and that black box was called the technical review team did any of you remember that so it was high it was it was all staff it was highly staff centered uh there were there were staff from the county there were staff from the school system and they would go through and they had a rubric for ranking every every single thing that went in and you always knew that if a
129fire truck went in there it was going to get funded if something related to schools went in you know schools compete very favorite would compete very favorably in that the issue that I always had was um that there never was any known amount of money that was going to get spent so you put in your wishlist winning the hopper and and then it came back out here's what you get here's what you don't get and there was no allocated funding for the schools to toggle around and decide what what we were going to prioritize going into it it was kind of the Hidden process um and there was even times there was one year where like the final piece to that was the county executive could just go in and change the order after it
130was all done and that actually happened one time the board had put together the request it went through the technical review team it was a good prioritized list for both the county and the school system and not the current County Executive but the previous one went in and just changed some things around and that became the CIP for the next five years um and then so you saw that evolve right trying to not just have staff doing it you know get get the two boards more involved have more interaction with the boards so I realized um and I and I support I certainly support your decision around coming and saying well we're not going to cut it we're going to go with the whole list it is a prioritized list so we'll start from there
131but I do want to um say that it I feel like the as an organization working together the the staff what we're trying to do is to make it more and more transparent around the amount of funding that is initially available or projected to be available and then as the process goes through they get Revenue updates you know starting now moving forward moving forward so um that's just an observation I'm not really trying to make any point I just wanted to share some perspective around where I've seen it over the years thank you I would if I may uh I would just like to say that the projects that are on our list are not have all gone heavily scrutinized uh they're not they're not I know you didn't mean it in the wish list
132um we haven't built a new school in 20 years we have 80 trailers full of students and classrooms and we have been very frugal already in in the list that we have and some of the renovation monies were already in the five-year CIP that the POS the supervisors approved last year so to see them zeroed out after they've already been approved as disheartening [Music] Schmidt we hope we have a complicated one piece of direction as we prepare our presentation um the reason it's zeroed out is that the the caught the Inc the cost of the elementary schools have gone up so we would like even if it's not approved to show this in some form for at least illustrative purposes that the adopted Baseline CIP doesn't even afford the projects that were originally adopted and
133we can figure out how to show that but I think it's it's not a balance but I think it's important to show what how much that can afford or not afford so we won't show it in an adopted way but I think it's important to see that we can't even do the pro the plan that's currently adopted so you would have that for December the 7th so the presentation will be highly on the in the justification of the projects you're asking for but I think you do need to lease a slide on uh how it fits in the current revenues and the limitations of the current revenues okay so just so what I was hearing you say was that you would you want to show that there's a gap already in terms of inflation between
134what you're projecting would be spent on so that 148 million that was adopted last year it just doesn't go as far right okay so it's the current it's what's current and it's a gap caused by inflation okay okay about how much are you estimating the costs have increased for the schools is that in the five percent range we have um depending on the type of project whether it's construction or technology or School Bus for FY we're updating our costs based on what things cost today in FY 23 so that's significantly higher than five percent on average and then moving forward it'll be in the five percent range and then um we're working with County staff to develop common assumptions for the sort of out years that are harder to predict thank you okay thank you
135okay so next we'll shift gears to a different but related five-year forecast which is our operating plan decisions will ensure long-term Financial stability and it also serves as a planning tool to supplement our existing budget process as you know the annual budgeting process is the point at which we comprehensively review a plan for the next school year and make decisions necessary for balancing to our available revenues what the five-year forecast does is to ensure that budget decisions made will not necessarily leave us in a place that is not financially sustainable in the long term we will first look at the revenue forecast about 68 of our revenues comes from the transfer from Albemarle County from general fund revenues about 27 of our revenues come from the state so we'll focus on those two drivers this
136is the forecast provided by Albemarle County in terms of their general fund revenues over the next five years general fund revenues are primarily split between the CIP acps and local government growth for fy24 is currently projected to be healthy with a slow dance a Slowdown projected in fy25 and 26 in anticipation of a potential recession in FY 27 and 28 revenues are expected to grow at about four percent which is a historical average [Music] and I bring this slide in front of you again since projected enrollment plays a significant role in our projection of State revenues as student enrollment grows State revenues will grow with it assuming that other factors stay constant we anticipated to grow about four percent over the next five years in enrollment in summary here's the five-year revenue forecast we're expecting
137a 5.4 percent increase in the local transfer a 1.6 percent increase in state revenues in FY 24. as I mentioned before the rate of growth decreases in fy25 and 26 and then levels out after that for State revenues we're assuming a constant local Composite Index no major changes in funding formulas going growing enrollment and increasing position costs for funded soq positions overall we're looking at about 10 million dollars in new revenues for next year a little bit lower in the two years following and then coming back up to the about the 10 million range in years four and five [Music] foreign switching over to the expenditure side in a typical year we see that these six factors and decisions Drive our expenditure budgets for the purpose of the five-year forecast we will assume increases in
138salaries to stay competitive against our markets increases in health care contributions to fully fund our health care fund more changes to class size ratios increases in operational obligations and inflation the operational impact of proposed CIP projects and a modest placeholder for new proposals this is one scenario for a five-year expenditure forecast see the potential costs for each of the expenditure drivers that was listed on the previous slide we anticipate significant costs at least in fy24 the next year to address compensation and operational inflation as you might expect we do anticipate that in future years compensation increases and inflation will reflect that of historical levels when overlaying the revenue and expenditure forecasts we're starting off FY 24 with a funding gap of over 5 million dollars that funding Gap grows significantly in fy25 and 26 due
139to slowing Revenue growth and then stabilizes in years four and five the slide here is to illustrate what options we have for balancing the budget each year these are not new and are the same options that we have in a typical year Revenue projections may increase as we talked about with CIP the projections will be finalized over the coming months we can limit new proposals or limit July 1st pay increases but we are committed to the compensation adjustments that we make during the current FY 23 year we can reduce services this may mean increasing class sizes reducing transfers that we have in place already or reducing our inflationary increases which would result in a reduction in our operational services these are budget decisions that will need to be made during this and future budget development
140processes but between these we're confident in our ability to maintain a financially sustainable plan for the long term are there any questions for the revenue and expenditure forecast and what might be missing from this plan or what other information would you like to have comments regarding Miss camazawa's questions I I think these will be um they're always hard decisions but I appreciate the heads up so that we can be thinking about them so thank you you know in in terms of some of these uh for example limit new proposals until we really know what the new proposals are it's it's tough uh but I'd say that's an area that that um you know we we may be able to uh uh to to cut away at the five million dollars um you know in increasing
141revenues uh whether it's uh local um you know that's I think something that should be explored um uh and and state I mean it's you know our Board of Supervisors has always been very very generous with us and uh uh and so um I I look forward to seeing the first versions of of the budget and we can work on it from there any other comments from board members so in the slide deck I do have some pieces that are specific to fy24 budget development but I'll check in with you all to see if you want to move this to the next meeting or not I do have one sorry do you have one question about the compensation assumptions in a in our presentation of the employment study we made a commitment to look at
142other um groups of employees in terms of their compensation so that's just sort of a comment that compensation assumptions we we did make that commitment to look at those I guess that's not the same as saying approve them but that was the assumption okay does that comment help with no I mean that was just your question I'm sorry Maya what else were you going to show us um if you would like I could move forward with the next section which is fy24 or we can postpone that for next meeting we have one of that agenda item after this so do we want to go into um the next part related to the budget or delay it there we go ahead I'd be at the mindset of postponing it just because I think it's pretty important
143it's like a big check in on what we want to see in the upcoming budget and I'd rather it have a dedicated time unless we want to really dive into it okay that's one vote to propose phone postponed postpone I will defer to our vice chair I'm just trying to be cognizant at a time we're 10 minutes behind and our meetings have been running to like 11 and getting to the meaty subjects at the very end I feel like people hold back comments you don't want to delay it the only issue our next our joint meeting with the supervisors is the seventh and that is the day before our next school the next meeting is somebody part yeah so I would I would like to cover budget issues that we're going to perhaps discuss the
144December 7th work session with the Board of Supervisors is focused on the long-range planning okay we would have the capital and the operating covered but the next piece was more of the annual budget process which we shouldn't be going into do we have a special board meeting on the first interviews for the um we could add something right now we're just going to do interviews okay applications okay okay all right so it's your vote to propose uh postpone yes Miss Lee yes Mr care yes yes all right so it's unanimous that we postpone that portion thank you thank you and Miss Schmidt and we hope that the vote didn't adversely affect you in any type of way but thank you so much for your presentation all right our next agenda item um the legislative agenda
145is done and the thing that's done is going to appear if I assume right hi everyone I see myself in the background up up there I am sorry to be remote tonight and not with you in person I am a bit under the weather and so um I'm grateful to be able to do it this way um which is kind of on our legislative agenda as well so um so I'll just take a moment and good evening to all of you by the way I hope you're all doing well um I'm just going to take a moment to talk a little bit about our proposed 2023 legislative agenda um discuss with you some of the things that seem to be highest priority in our school division when it comes to State legislation so I will
146share my screen with you oh Jennifer will you advance slides it's telling me I can't share my screen thank you I'm not trying to share my screen Helen you can share your screen now all right there we go foreign sorry [Music] all right so uh as you all know the reason we do this every year is just to talk to give our community and our state legislators an idea of what some of our legislative priorities are um on key policy issues that are generally on a state level um so tonight I just want to give you this information see what your feedback is on it and then we'll go from there um so we will be scheduling meetings with legislators soon I believe we'll be working on a December meeting with as many legislators as
147we can get in the room as well as you all and possibilities for um having January meetings with legislators as well to do some advocacy work so any board members who would like to do that please contact me I know Mr alcar you've already mentioned to me that you'd like to have some of those meetings so I'm happy to set those up for some in-person advocacy this January um so General Assembly session starts on January 11th this year it's a short session um only 30 days in theory um the house education chair it has not changed it's Glenn Davis and the Senate education chair still Louise Lucas um we do have the benefit of having two um chairs who are also uh serve our district so the house of Courts and just house courts of
148Justice chairs Rob Bell and the Senate Judiciary Committee co-chair is predeed so um it's wonderful to have access to people who do that kind of work who are also who also represent our district and I'm just going to show you or speak with you tonight about some of our um sort of the highlights of the legislative agenda items um so that these are the things that we don't generally propose that are a bit novel this year um and hopefully that'll be a little bit more interesting to you and inspire a little bit more feedback um so in terms of hiring practices um one issue that has apparently been having an effect on people all over the state is our fingerprinting policies the state of Virginia for any employee to be able to come in and
149begin working for the school division they have to go through the Virginia's Central criminal database for their fingerprints they are not able to use any other authorized fingerprinting databases in the country and so what I'm proposing here is just that we would allow people to use fingerprinting databases from other states or Countrywide National databases as well like the FBI these are all obviously very valid methods of of getting that information criminal history information and so um you can imagine we have moments during the summer for example when we're trying to get teachers or new employees into the school division get them ready to go people travel during the summer who work in education especially so this would be an opportunity for us not to have to bring people back to the state of Virginia to
150be able to get into the system and get started we also I've also proposed on here that we would ask for a little bit more flexibility when it comes to background checks you may already understand that when background checks are clean that shows up immediately in an online database but when they're not it takes more time because there actually has to be a mailed background check piece of information that comes from USPS so um that we have no time frames for this this has had an adverse impact in the school division because people who don't have any actual criminal history but for example come from different countries but still have worker status in the U.S have been hung up in this because if you're born in a different country this actually looks like it looks
151on the through the system like you may you're pending so you may actually have something on your record when indeed you don't um you can imagine this isn't a great way to start the employer employee relationship off so we're asking for a new way to get that information through when that when there needs to be more time um on that background check um you all already know about local taxing Authority and that initiative it came up last year in general assembly well this year in general assembly in 2022 but we are declaring our support of local taxing Authority which would allow us just give us the authority it would not actually mean that we would do it but it would give us the authority to Levy an additional one-person sales tax and that would just
152add funding for division capital projects so um kind of toss in with what Ms Schmidt Miss kumazawa just spoke about earlier meetings of public bodies this is something we did discuss last year but it seems to have gained more traction this year so um we're basically asking to allow for quorums without the same amount of advance notice um that are required that's currently required or for people to um sorry for people to join remotely and create a farm without the necessary advance notice that has been required so far throughout this sort of new covid um remote meeting situation so we're just asking a little bit of flexibility there [Music] um onboarding bus drivers I know I've spoken with a few of you about this already um back in 2020 uh Cree Deeds actually sponsored and
153Rob Bell and I worked on together and uh as as well as Senator Deeds um a bill that allowed for bus drivers to be added to the critical shortage designation in the state of Virginia and you already probably know that the critical shortage designation just means that you can retire from whatever education or whatever role you've had within the vrs but come back um and and work within one of those critical shortage designated areas but um take your retirement and still get paid so you don't actually add into the retirement system anymore but you can still get paid from it as well as taking whatever salary you may have for the work that you'll be doing uh so what the only issue with this which theoretically would be a wonderful help for getting more bus
154drivers into the school division as we we know that's a serious issue all over the country there is a 365 day required break in service through the vrs so you can't actually come back a week later or 30 days later and come back into work you have to wait that that full year and the problem with that is you can imagine is that people who actually need the income are just waited they can't wait that full year so we're asking within some reasonable guard rails to have a shorter a shorter required break-in service that would facilitate a little bit more because we do so often have folks who say so retiring bus drivers or other administrators teachers who say they would like to come back and drive a bus and stay involved and engage with
155the school division but can't for this reason um swatting we've actually asked for a little bit more um a little bit more consequence for students or people in general who make hoax Communications to um 911 so to Emergency Services we all know that this has been an increased issue in the state of Virginia and all over the country um so we're just asking to be able to to make more um to provide more consequences when these issues pop up and we haven't been very specific about this on our legislative agenda because I'm not I'm not convinced that we really want to truly punish students to the extent that they end up in jail or have a permanent felony on their records but I I do provide that we would like just to have more flexibility
156for consequences when this takes place um and I've also created um a an item on the agenda that's based from this statement that you all released regarding the transgender and gender expansive model policies um several weeks ago so I I've I've basically um shortened that condensed it and put it in here and say said that we always want to be um we always want to provide a safe environment that we expect that and that it's the Commonwealth constitutional responsibility to provide this for all students in a safe and engaging way um so these are really what I have at this point for you all and I'm happy to hear any feedback or take any questions that you may have there are a legislative agenda items that you may have seen um on what's on the
157on the electronic school board agenda hey thank you for the presentation Miss Dunn do we have questions on um items or the date you've got to work on a date for us to meet with the legislators right that's right so right now it looks like we're looking into mid-December for that with opportunities for other advocacy outside of that so I think we will try to have one large meeting with all of our legislators as well as many as possible as well as as many as possible of you all but from there you know certainly January there'll be opportunities to have one-on-ones with our legislators or any other time really that you request Helen is there any specific language proposed or a specific proposal on the vrs and critical shortage designation or is any particular legislator
158interested in putting that bill in so Senator Dietz has actually said that he would take this item up on our behalf he and I have been talking a good deal about that um there is some red tape at the federal level which of course we don't have power over in this way and that pertains to the IRS so we're actually working right now on figuring out how we could kind of balance that IRS red tape and and this critical shortage change out so that we might actually be able to effectuate something that benefits the School Division we don't have all of that nailed down right now Senator Deeds is actually working really hard on it and I think he he's trying to figure out through code what is possible so um not yet I guess
159is the short answer but we're getting there Dr Dunn Dr Dunn thank you these These are well thought out and uh and I'm sure that that um you know we're gonna have some payments uh you know moving forward so thank you very much thank you my pleasure yeah I have a few quick comments I would agree on the BRS uh for critical shortage areas we just on our bus ride along today we're hearing about how they have a driver who they're limited to working four and a half hours a day in order to not um uh get rid of their VR their retirement and but they were willing to work more if they could and we have such a shortage it just seems silly so hopefully that can be worked out although I know it's
160been a priority for many years so it's kind of this heartening to hear that it might not even be feasible to some extent if there's Federal red tape my other question was for the meetings of the public body what limitations are we looking to remove specifically or are we like targeting a number like 50 versus 25 or are we trying to get rid of the individual requirements you need to participate virtually like you don't have to provide specific reasons why I'm just curious because this is um fairly vague and then the follow-up is are weak working with the Board of Supervisors because I just went to a meeting I think where they're also advocating for something similar they were trying to get all the ability to do virtual Birds Board of Supervisors meeting and I
161think they got pushed back yeah so um as of right now I think the idea for the public bodies question and I couldn't hear everything you said prior to that with regard to the vrs um so if I'm not sure if you had a question at the end of that and if you did I like it oh good very good um so in terms of the um of the public meetings of public bodies what I think is really the ideal here would be that we could establish Quorum um a without having to have the prior notification when somebody has to um join remotely I think at the at this time we have um there is a three-day requirement I believe um for that um and beyond that for people to be able to um join
162remotely when necessary without actually having to um to do any prior notification I think is really the goal um several of my counterparts across the state 8 have struggled with this with their school boards and certainly with advisory committees I don't think anyone wants for example school boards to meet remotely primarily but I think for circumstances like me right now where you simply can't be in person but you still want to be able to engage in a meeting the idea would be for that to remain possible without having to do all of the same notifications or lose some of the Quorum rights [Music] yeah it does and I know it's just Nitty Gritty I've just I guess I'd be curious what um specific changes we were looking for to that code section are there any
163other comments or questions from Miss Dunn if not Helen thank you so very much for your presentation uh tonight and we do hope that you're feeling better so thanks so much thank you thanks so much to all of you take care thank you take care all right is there any other business some board members or from the superintendent foreign